NBA Coaches without Coaching Experience

Mark Jackson was named Warriors’ head coach because “his leadership skills as a player more than outweighed his lack of coaching experience” and according to Sam Amick from SI.com:
Golden State’s future looking bright with the addition of Jackson.

What’s more, here’s another IMHO noteworthy quote:

“Sources said West was instrumental in the hiring, as he had made it clear he wasn’t looking for a ‘retread’ coach and that he preferred candidates who played the game professionally. That background and his national television spot clearly give Jackson credibility among the game’s modern-day players and could perhaps come in handy during free agency”

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Is a long career as a player and huge bank of TV clichés enough for a coaching job in the NBA?
I mean no disrespect but if the answer is “no”, Jackson will fail, if “yes” what would it say to us about this job?
Well, we would rehash old topic about stat geeks and coaches and deck chairs.

On one hand I’ve heard a lot of complaints among fans that teams recycle the same coaches over and over, on the other hand I found it fascinating that there’s a highly paid job which requires no similar experience so I’ve decided to explore history for another examples of NBA coaches without coaching experience…

Thanks to basketball-reference.com we have a full list of coaches employed by the NBA but to cut this project into reasonable time I’ve decided to look only at coaches who coached in the last 10 years [exactly 100!] and who had no previous coaching experience either as an assistant or at other basketball levels. Here’s the full list:

Coach	From	To	Yrs	Gms	W-L%	First Job	Team’s W% Year Before	First Season	Additional information
Lenny Wilkens	1970	2005	32	2487	0,536	SEA	0,369	0,439	Started as Player-Coach
Don Nelson	1977	2010	31	2398	0,557	MIL	0,463	0,422	SG as a player
Doc Rivers	2000	2011	12	913	0,555	ORL	0,66	0,5	What did he do between 1996 and 99?
Scott Skiles	2000	2011	11	778	0,509	PHO	0,54	0,645	Assistant for only 20 games before midseason change
Isiah Thomas	2001	2008	5	410	0,456	IND	0,683	0,5	Had front office job
Dan Issel	1993	2002	6	388	0,464	DEN	0,297	0,439	Forward as a player
Dave Cowens	1979	2002	6	352	0,457	BOS	0,39	0,397	Player-Coach, midseason change
Vinny Del Negro	2009	2011	3	246	0,463	CHI	0,4	0,5	Most recent and most similar example?
Kevin McHale	2005	2009	2	94	0,415	MIN	0,71	0,613	Had front office job, midseason change
Kiki Vandeweghe	2010	2010	1	64	0,188	NJN	0,42	0,1875	Had front office job, midseason change
Kevin Pritchard	2005	2005	1	27	0,185	POR	0,5	0,185	Had front office job, midseason change
Marc Jackson	2011	???	???	???	???	GSW	0,439	???

Wow.
Even if we exclude interim coaches teams going that unconventional route could get someone below average or… one of most accomplished coaches in the history [in terms of games coached and total wins].

So which group will Marc Jackson join?
Warriors have young team, some room under cap space and some of their players badly underperformed last season because of injuries [Curry, Lee and Biedrins] so my guess would be surprisingly… the latter.

P.S. I have to mention that both Wilkens and Rivers tasted first success at their second coaching job…

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